Dustings #29
/2020 Supporters should have received an email yesterday to see if they want to sign up for 2021. If you’re a supporter and didn’t get the email, check your spam, and if it’s not there, let me know.
Joshua Jay has an online show on March 3rd. You can buy tickets for it here if that’s where your life is at.
I’m not bringing this up to plug the show, but rather to make a promise to Josh. You see, whenever Josh does anything, I get a bunch of emails sent to me with people poking fun at him with jokes and bad photoshops. I want Josh to know that what you see below is the type of low-energy ball-busting that I won’t permit on my site.
Show some respect to Josh, you jerks.
In Eric Jones’ Masterclass on Vanishing Inc, he continually referred to playing cards as “pasteboards.” I’m not a fan of this terminology. I think it’s supposed to sound fancier and shame dummies like me who just call them “cards.” But when you break it down, it’s really the most artless way to describe playing cards. If you asked the biggest moron at the playing card factory what they were doing, he’d be like:
“Well… we’re using a bunch of paste here… and we’re gluing paper together to make little—you know—little boards.”
And what do you call them?
“Uhm… hmmm… Paper-Pastey-Things? No…that’s not good… how about, Pasteboards?”
So pasteboards is actually the dumb way to refer to them. If Eric is going to use the term “pasteboards,” then I insist he keep up this overly-literal object terminology and—instead of saying he does “coin magic”—he should say, “I do magic with Metal Roundies.”
(If anyone wants some free advertising for their online lecture, just sincerely refer to coins at some point as “metal roundies” and I will happily plug your product on this site for free.)
I have zero business sense. I’ve lucked into a successful formula for keeping this site going, but that was through a unique set of circumstances that happened to fall into place. Not due to any savvy business acumen on my part.
So this probably isn’t good business advice, but tell me why this wouldn’t work. Penguin has their live lectures and Vanishing Inc has their Masterclasses. Imagine one of them decided to call their service Penguin Prime or Vanishing Prime and you got the monthly videos and free priority shipping on orders. Doesn’t it seem like if one of those companies did that:
A bunch more people would sign up for the monthly subscription.
People like me, who split their magic purchase around somewhat randomly between Penguin, Vanishing Inc., would now channel the majority of their purchases through the one shop that was offering the free priority shipping.
People would end up purchasing more frequently to take advantage of the added service they’re getting with their monthly subscription.
And I says specifically “priority” shipping because, while both companies do have a free shipping option now, it’s this weird janky-ass shipping which sometimes take just a few days and other times you get the sense they put your package on a retarded donkey and just pointed him in your general direction.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bad idea. I’m sure they’ve probably run the numbers on this sort of thing. It just seems like a win-win situation. I’m sort of surprised none of the big online shops (that I know of) have incentives in place to get you to buy the magic you can get from anywhere, from them. You know? Perhaps there’s some détente in place to not try and mess around too much with prices and/or perks so they don’t have to get into some sort battle where they’re undercutting and outdoing each other. As I said, I know nothing about business.
Magical Transformations #2
My favorite part of working on the books is seeing my bad, clunky visual ideas executed beautifully.
Here is my first sketch for the most recent book cover and the preliminary sketch and final version created by Stasia Burrington.
